Shattered Lands

by ALICE HENDERSON

  Raven turned to Gordon. “Where’s your other plane?”

  He grimaced. “I hate to say it, but it’s back on the other side of the Rockies.” H124 thought of their terrifying ordeal, trying to cross a pass in the mountains during a violent snowstorm. She shivered.

  Gordon brought up the location on his PRD’s map, and turned so they could see it. Raven almost laughed. “We just caught a bit of luck!”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “We can get really close to this location using the old I-70 freight hyperloop.”

  “The what?” Gordon asked.

  “Before the megacities, supplies and food were transported across the country on huge trucks. It required a lot of petroleum and emitted a lot of pollution as the country’s population continued to climb. To work toward a cleaner future, some inventive entrepreneurs suggested the use of hyperloops, giant steel tubes in partial vacuums that could move pods with passengers or freight. Only a few were built, mainly along high-traffic corridors, like this route through the Rockies. Ironically, even the oil companies built one going up north to transport equipment and personnel for oil and tar sands extraction. We use that one to travel to Sanctuary City. We found them a couple decades ago and repaired them, so there are a few places we can travel to quickly. There used to be one along the west coast, along the route we just followed. But as sea levels rose, it got flooded. It was destroyed.”

  Wonder crept across Gordon’s face. “Fascinating.”

  H124 glanced at Rowan across the room as he said goodbye and switched off his PRD. He joined them. “I’m afraid this is where we part company,” Rowan told them, stepping aside as a woman carrying a stack of equipment hurried past. “My people have picked out a good location for our new settlement, but I need to go out there and help shield our communication, set up some proximity alarms in case the PPC goes in silent and we don’t have advance warning. I think they know we’re listening in by now, but it’ll still take them some time to find the device I planted.”

  H124 felt a punch in the gut at the thought of his leaving. First Willoughby, and now Rowan. She felt like she was back outside New Atlantic, when he’d walked off into the night, leaving her to hike to the weather shelter alone. She swallowed hard. “Of course. We understand,” she heard herself say.

  “To be honest, they’re getting pretty mad at me. I’m supposed to be their go-to tech person, and I’ve been a bit remiss.”

  Raven held out his hand. “It’s been for a good cause. We really appreciate all the help you’ve given us.”

  Rowan took his hand and shook it. “Thanks for fixing us up after the crash.”

  “Of course.”

  Then Rowan took H124’s hand and led her away. Around them people hurried with equipment and boxes, rushing out to a common meeting area from which they could evacuate the camp. She felt pressed, wanting him to stay, wanting to go with him, to be in two places at once, finding the spacecraft parts and helping him with his new camp. He touched her cheek gently and opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. He clasped both her hands. When he looked up again, she felt that same longing in his gaze that she’d felt once before. “Words fail me . . . this whole thing has been . . .” He trailed off. “This whole thing has been the most powerful experience of my life. I feel terrible leaving you, especially when we’re getting closer to finding a way to stop this thing.”

  His hands were warm around hers. “I understand. You have to make sure everyone’s safe.” She glanced over at Gordon, who had pulled out an E6B—what he called a whiz wheel—that the Rovers had found for him. It was an analog flight computer, and he was already calculating their upcoming path. “But I’m in good company. Gordon says only a couple of us could have gone anyway.”

  He sighed. “I feel like I’m being called away to plug a leaky bathtub when a tidal wave is on the way.”

  “But if we’re successful, your people are going to need a safe home. If the PPC finds them and kills them before that . . .”

  He nodded. “I know.” He pulled her to him, wrapping his strong arms around her. She breathed in his familiar scent of exotic spices, the rain scent of his clothes. “You take care of yourself,” he whispered into her ear.

  Then he pulled back, took her head in his hands and kissed her deeply. She felt an electric surge in her stomach and allowed herself to melt into the kiss, to grip his back, reveling in the sensation of their bodies pressed together. When he pulled back, she whispered, “You do the same.”

  He released her hands and turned away, hurrying through the crowd to his all-terrain vehicle. Before he climbed in, he turned, just as he had that first night outside New Atlantic, and raised a hand, his face full of emotion. She held up her hand as well, the pang growing in her as he swung up into the driver’s seat. And then he was pulling out of the Rover camp, and she became aware once more of the crowd around her, shouting and running.

  She helped a few people carry boxes full of ancient books and maps out to the rendezvous point, then stood there, blinking under the bright sun as she watched Rowan drive off into the distance.

  “You ready?” Raven’s voice cut into her reverie.

  She collected herself. “Yes.” She surveyed the frightened Rovers. “Will they use the hyperloop to get to Sanctuary City?”

  “Yes. And we’ll catch the one toward Gordon’s plane.”

  Gordon approached them. “Got the route almost calculated. We should get out of here before those media bastards show up.”

  She took his arm. “Right.”

  Raven waved them over to a dirty four-wheel drive jeep that had been charging all day in the sun. “Get in. We can drive to the hyperloop from here.”

  She and Gordon piled in. The older man clapped his hands together. “This is going to be fun!”

  * * * *

  Raven drove them about thirty miles out, bouncing along rough ground in the jeep, winding up and down small hills. Winds tore from the west, sending up spiraling dust devils that meandered across the terrain before dissipating.

  They entered a patch of forest that had died long ago. Some skeletal, sun-bleached trees still stood, lonely sentinels with bare arms stretching out plaintively. Raven steered the jeep between thick fallen trunks, and their progress slowed. She wondered how the other Rovers fared, if they’d all gotten out in time. As they bounced along, she scanned above for any sign of a media airship. She was grateful to see only a blue sky, with dark storm clouds forming in the west.

  As they passed a group of large solar panels, Raven stopped the jeep. He hopped out and walked over to them. He entered commands on his PRD. When he finished, he gave a thumbs up. She’d seen other Rovers use that same “all is well” sign with each other, and decided that she liked it. He returned to the jeep, and they motored along for another mile before he stopped again.

  Raven brought up a window on his PRD and entered a command. She startled when she heard the grinding of gears, a loud clank, and watched two massive doors creak open in the ground before them. She hadn’t seen them until now. Scrubby vegetation grew on their surface, disguising them completely.

  The doors swung straight up, revealing a dark rectangular hole. Raven switched on his headlights, and drove down into it. H124 turned in her seat to watch the doors close slowly behind them. With another clang they sealed, and the darkness engulfed them.

  Raven drove on, his headlights illuminating a large ramp leading down to a flat area. Several other cars were parked at the bottom. He pulled up next to one of them and cut the motor. The cars all looked to be solar-powered, though down here in the dark, their batteries would die. Then she saw that they’d all been plugged in. As they climbed out, Raven unwound a small wire from the back of the jeep, and led it over to a power contact point in the wall. It adhered with a click.

  “This way,” he said, removing his backpack from the car. S
he slung her own on her back. Switching on their headlamps, they followed Raven down a walkway. Temperatures here were cool, the tunnel musty and disused. She stifled a cough.

  As they descended a metal staircase their footsteps echoed in the cavernous tunnel. At the bottom stood a wall with a round door. Raven typed something into his PRD, and the door hissed open, revealing a tubular vehicle with over a hundred seats and a large area where freight could be strapped down. He ducked inside, and they followed. Gordon took the place in. “Well, I’ll be . . .” The door hissed shut behind them, and H124 took a seat up front, shrugging off her pack. Gordon sat next to her.

  “How fast does this puppy go?” Gordon asked.

  “Over 700 mph.”

  Gordon gave a long, low whistle.

  Raven sat down and entered more commands into his PRD. “Here we go.”

  H124 heard a hiss, and something gave off a loud peal. The pod shook slightly, then grew still. She felt a gentle acceleration, and the ride went amazingly smooth. “And we’re off,” Raven said.

  Gordon chuckled as he gazed around the pod. “Hell of a thing.” He swung his legs in his seat, grinning. H124 couldn’t help but crack a smile watching him.

  “We should get some sleep. It’s a long haul ahead of us,” Raven said.

  H124 sighed. Sleep. She felt like she could sleep for a week. She’d only grabbed an hour or so on their drive back from the radar facility. Her eyes burned with exhaustion.

  She rolled up her new jacket, one she’d picked from the myriad choices in Sanctuary City. It was a knee-length black jacket with red and purple sections on the back, made out of a sturdy material that felt like it could take a beating. Raven had watched her, amused, as she had selected new clothes to replace her old worn ones, going not by aesthetics, but feeling each one to see how durable the fabric was. Now she made a pillow of her jacket and moved to one of the empty rows, stretching out. In moments she was out.

  * * * *

  She woke to Raven gently touching her arm. “We’re here.”

  Groggy and disoriented, she sat up. Gordon stirred a few rows behind her, rubbing his eyes and yawning. He gave a big stretch, and stood up.

  This time the door at the front of the pod hissed open. They trudged out, feeling the lack of sleep.

  This end of the hyperloop looked just like the one they’d entered from. They climbed up a set of grated stairs. At the top, another assortment of cars waited. Raven selected a jeep and detached its power cable, which auto-retracted into a small hatch in the jeep’s side.

  They all climbed in, and Raven brought up a window in his PRD. “Let’s just make sure no one’s up there.” As H124 looked over his shoulder, he connected to a series of topside cameras. She could see the high, impressive silhouette of the Rocky Mountains in the distance, their details obscured by what looked like a grey layer of haze or smoke. The land above was dry and barren, and dust blew along the ground. Stands of long-dead, blackened trees fanned into the distance. There was no sign of life or movement.

  Raven started up the jeep. H124 insisted Gordon take the front seat, and made herself comfortable in the back. They drove up the steep ramp, gears clanking as the gigantic doors swung open. They stopped with a clatter, and Raven eased the jeep out of the tunnel.

  Again the doors swung shut to their rear. H124 looked back to see them concealed perfectly in the ground. She studied the area, trying to spot the cameras, but saw only an assembly of boulders and the skeletal remains of the ancient forest. She could have walked right over the area and been completely ignorant of the hyperloop.

  Gordon brought up his map, sharing the location data to his jet with Raven. “We’re only twenty-four miles away,” Raven said, grinning. “Not bad at all!”

  She smiled as they motored off in that direction. Behind them loomed the massive peaks of the Rockies. They hadn’t made it last time they tried to cross those mountains. She pushed away memories of the crash, the little plane that was torn apart, Gordon’s terrible injury, and the unbearable cold.

  They bounced along in silence, taking in the scene. To their south lay an abandoned town, which they drove through, motoring down broken streets. Most buildings no longer stood, but were lying in piles of rotted wood. A tall steel sign leaned at an angle. It had probably once advertised the location of a lodging or restaurant. At the top of its high pole was a circular enclosure, but its innards had long since broken and fallen out.

  On her right, strange pillars stood in a row beneath a rusted and sagging overhang. She’d seen these things all over the roads when she’d driven west in her solar-powered car. Nearby, a tarnished sign with a winged red horse leaned against a fallen building. At the far edge of town, the remains of a single edifice still stood, its southern wall collapsed, the roof long since gone. The barely legible lintel above its door read “Wagon Wheel Saloon.”

  Gordon brought her attention to the front of the car. “What’s that?” He pointed at what looked like a small dust storm five or so miles in the distance. It was nothing like the immense squall they’d encountered on their way back from the radar facility, and at first she was relieved it was so small. Then she spotted objects moving in the dust, speeding toward them. Raven slowed the jeep, and she pulled out a pair of diginocs from her pack.

  Standing up in the back of the vehicle, she gripped the roll bar with one hand to steady herself, and raised the nocs to her face. A roaring mass of cars thundered toward them, tall spears mounted on their front grills and bumpers. Even from this distance, she could see bulbous shapes impaled on the spikes. Human heads, she realized, with streaming ribbons of blood-soaked hair.

  Savage-looking men and women stood in the back of the trucks, fists raised, yelling at their compatriots in neighboring cars. One man held the severed head of an enemy, waving it around violently, his face a mask of rage.

  “Death Riders,” she breathed. “And they’re headed straight for us.”

  Chapter 5

  The dust cloud grew closer.

  Gordon gripped the dashboard. “What do we do?”

  Raven looked over his shoulder. “Have they seen us?”

  H124 turned around, noting the dissipated remnants of their own dust trail being carried away on the wind. It was nothing compared to the plumes the Death Riders were kicking up. H124 studied them again with the nocs. They were veering slightly to the right, and most of them seemed to be focused on each other, as well as a certain point in the distance. “I don’t think so.”

  “We need to hide,” Raven said. He gripped the wheel, coming to a stop. “The doors to the hyperloop are too big. If we swing those open now to hide in there, they’d spot them. We can’t risk them finding it.”

  “Isn’t this area riddled with old uranium mines?” Gordon recalled.

  “You’re right.” He brought up the map on his PRD and waved through it. “There’s one not far from here.”

  Slowly he spun the jeep around, moving just a few feet at the time to avoid kicking up a dust trail. The progress was agonizingly slow. He drove down an embankment, and the Death Riders disappeared from H124’s view. Raven drove along an empty wash, where the ground was uneven and bumpy. She jostled around in the back.

  The jeep climbed up the embankment on the far side of the wash, and once again H124 could see the Death Riders’ cloud of dirt. She turned around, kneeling backward in the seat, and watched them through the nocs. One armored van was mounted with a fifty-caliber gun in a crow’s nest, a woman wheeling it around, ready to fire. Red paint covered her face in a complex geometric pattern. H124 zoomed in, noting that the paint was uneven and caked, clumpy in some places. It wasn’t paint, she realized. It was blood. The woman bared her teeth, chanting something with the others, her mouth streaming with fresh scarlet.

  Raven lurched over a bump, and H124 momentarily lost sight of them.

  “How’s it looking back the
re?” Raven asked her.

  She retrained the nocs on them. The Death Riders were still focused on some point in the distance. “So far, so good.” She looked ahead. Raven was steering them toward a dilapidated old mine, decrepit timbers bracing the entrance. The dark, four-sided aperture was barely big enough to accommodate them. Raven inched the jeep inside, and the cool darkness enveloped them.

  They could hear the Death Riders’ engines now. H124 jumped out of the jeep and stood at the mine’s entrance, just out of sight. The dust cloud behind the riders was thick and churning, and H124 realized they were dragging objects behind the convoy. She zoomed in, spotting chains that dragged large lumps, rocks maybe, or bundles of material. She zoomed in a little more, and saw that one of the lumps had long snaking projections, flailing and whipping this way and that. She realized with horror that they were arms and legs. Then a screaming head came into view, the man’s skin scoured off in large patches from being dragged, a chain wrapped tightly around his torso. Seeping holes riddled his chest.

  She saw two Death Riders standing in the back of their trucks, pointing down at him. Each held a bow and arrow. One drew back on his bow, and H124 could see something bulbous at the tip of the arrow as he nocked it. As the other Death Rider pointed at the helpless victim, the second one loosed the arrow. It lodged inside the man’s chest. Seconds later, he exploded in a crimson spray, and mounds of flesh flew skyward. Only his legs remained, bouncing away into the dirt, as the chain dragged on bare ground.

  H124 lowered the diginocs, gasping for breath. When she looked again, she saw that the other lumps being dragged were bodies in various stages of dismemberment, some nearly whole corpses, others mere torsos. The two men with bows high fived each other, grinning as the severed legs vanished into the distance.

  “What are they doing?” Raven asked, joining her. He pulled out his diginocs just as Gordon walked up to them, holding his own pair. Together the three watched as the Death Riders’ path veered slowly, on a course that would soon intercept their location.